LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Illustration. I. Frontispiece, Greylock Mountain. Employed as a type. II. Portrait of Charles G. Finney, the early vindicator in III. Portrait of Mark Hopkins, the great teacher, who was both love and law in enthusiastic personal contact with thousands of students. IV. Portrait of Horace Bushnell, A New England apostle of the V. Portrait of Henry Ward Beecher, the foremost preacher of modern times, who excelled in bringing the pure teaching of Christ into the popular heart, and in changing the conception of religion among Anglo-Saxon people from fear to hope. Page 19 43 67 151 FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS FROM LIFE GROUP THINKERS. "If a list were made of the men, who are declared to be in the line of apostolic succession how would they on the whole compare with the following: Paul, Clement, Augustine, Luther, Wesley, Edwards, Channing. Robertson, Maurice, Mark Hopkins, Finney, Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks?"--Anon. "Christian thought, as presented by Clement, Origen and Athanasius, overcame the polemics of their heathen antagonists, and brought forth into the clear light of the reason, the principle which bound heaven and earth together, and formed the basis of a universal religion.""- Alexander V. G. Allen. "Christianity is a philosophy, a history, and a life."-Lyman Abbott. "Immanence and transcendence must meet in the nature of the Ineffable God. * * God is against the race only when it is against itself, and in that case His wrath is His mercy." Philosophy proves that the moral power of God can be mediated only through the living personality of man, and history declares that the personality of the Divine man is the sovereign and indispensable manifestation of God to the world. If the modern pulpit wishes to bring men to God, it must first of all bring men to Christ."-Geo. A. Gordon. "To set up natural law in the social world or the business world, as distinct from and contrary to the Christian law is not only unmoral, it is unscientific. Love is the fulfilling of all law."-Washington Gladden. * "The Church can never realize its own working unity, the Church of the future can not be any other than the Church of to-day, until it makes a sufficient place in its life for freedom, particularly for intellectual freedom. * It cannot realize itself until it is willing, and until it knows how, to lose itself in the life of humanity."- William J. Tucker. "Have we taken in the implied assumption which underlies this constant and simple insistence of Christ on receptivity? It means an optimism that the world but little shares. It means that God and good are in the world, good to be received, love to be trusted. They are like air, everywhere, ready to crowd in. You have only to open your heart; they will come in. Everywhere is the Father, and the Father's house. We depreciate these qualities of receptivity and trust because we really distrust God and His world."-H. C. King. We see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul."-Jonathan Edwards. "We must go on converting men."-James H. Fairchild. xvi. "I am persuaded that the chief peril of spiritual religion is not novel views in theology, nor the inrush of a new philosophy which thinks of visible things as a growth rather than a mechanism; but the danger is that men shall forget that God is as near to their spirits as air to their bodies, and that the humblest child and the profoundest scholar are equally blind without Him."-Amory H. Bradjord. Does the Word of the Lord come to His servants to-day as it came to the prophets and the leaders of Israel? * * The method of God is one in all ages. Every one who is to speak for Him must hear Him speak." This instance is taken from the life of Mr. Finney when preaching in the state of New York. "The Lord opened the windows of Heaven upon me and gave me great enlargement and power in prayer. Up to this moment I had no idea what text I should use on the occasion. As I rose from my knees, the Lord gave me this: Up get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city.'" * * "At the second visit Mr. Finney learned, for the first time, that the place had been nicknamed Sodom, and the old man who had invited the preacher to visit it was nicknamed Lot, because he was the only professor of religion there."-R. F. Horton. "O yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill To pangs of nature, sins of will. That nothing walks with aimless feet; Behold we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall And every winter change to spring." -Alfred Tennyson. "The sources of theology are not to be found in books, not even in sacred books, but in Christian experience. * * It is true that the scientific student must have his class book, and be guided by it where to look for his facts and how to treat them when he finds them. So we have our text book, this Bible of God, this book of man, and in addition to it we have our volumes of Church history and we have our histories of Christian doctrine and method. But these are but guides, pointing us to where we shall find the great verifying facts and teaching us how to deal with them when we find them. Do you tell me that such a basis of theology is uncertain? That the experience of one man may differ widely from the experience of another man? That is true; for if out of mere individual experiences we were to attempt the construction of a theology, we should reach conclusions as confused and as misleading as would be those of the scientist if he attempted out of a little fact here and a little fact yonder to construct a great scientific theory. Our induction must be from all the facts. My experience` must be attested by yours, yours and mine by that of a great company, that of a great company to-day by that of a great company which went before us. When so attested and so confirmed, it will be found that the great realities of religion are written in the hearts and souls of men; and that through a broad induction from them, must we arrive at our beliefs in theology."-George A. Berry. |